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This paper examines the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), mainly computer,

for teaching and learning purposes at the university level. The paper gives a brief overview of the use of

ICT in learning and teaching at university level. It also discusses the students’ perceptions on the use of

ICT in their daily life and in school environment. For this purpose, a questionnaire consisting of 25 items

were given to 300 students studying at the engineering departments from 2 different universities in

Turkey. The result supports the necessity of using ICT for making classes more vivid, pleasant and

appealing to the students.

Key Words: ICT, computer, technology, education, engineering. INTRODUCTION

ICT merely stands for Information and Communication Technologies and Blurton (1999) defines it as a

“various set of technological tools and resources used to communicate, create, disseminate, store, and

manage information”. These technologies consist of computers, the Internet, broadcasting technologies

(radio and television), and telephony. Maximizing efficiency and effectiveness by means of using the

Internet and computers is an increasing interest not only for communication but also for education at all

levels and in both formal and non-formal settings during recent years.

From the earliest times when computers were commercially available, they could be found in educational

institutions, and educators (e.g. Bork, 1980; Carnegie Commission on Higher Education, 1977; Hernes,

2002) strongly believed that computers would support learning. Several educational institutions,

including public and private schools opened CALL centers for this purpose. International dialogue and

international access to educational items became possible only after ICT was developed and the Internet

became available in schools. The development of ICT, particularly the Internet, has eased the

development of the globalization and therefore the quality of education. With open access to knowledge

and the new communication technologies, it is now possible to widen the range of opportunities for more

equal education even in the poorest countries provided that they have the Internet.

The use of ICT in education provides several benefits for extending educational opportunities to groups

of people. ICTs are potentially powerful tools for extending educational opportunities, for formal or/and

non-formal,—scattered or/and rural populations, groups traditionally excluded from education due to

cultural or social reasons such as ethnic minorities, females, persons with disabilities, and the elderly, as

well as all others who for reasons of cost or because of time constraints are unable to enroll on campus. It

also enables students to concentrate on the lessons as well as to become aware of the developments

worldwide. The benefits of ICT can be listed as:

Co-Author: songul.aynal@adanabtu.edu.tr

• Use of ICT requires no limit in time and space

It is possible to use the ICTs anytime and anywhere, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week via asynchronous

learning/teaching no matter what the time lag is between the delivery of instruction and its receptor. The

only condition needed would be the access to the Internet. Teleconferencing, radio or TV broadcast

would also be possible for those in diverse areas.

• Resources are no more remote with ICT

With ICT it is possible to access a wealth of learning materials in almost every subject from anywhere at

any time by unlimited number of people. ICT also facilitates access to resource persons, mentors,

experts, researchers, peers, writers, poets, artists, professionals, politicians, etc. all over the world. With

the Internet it is possible to find any information about any subject.

• ICT provides no limit in fun

There are many Internet resources that provide fun for 24 hours. Music, comics, funny movies etc are

there to help those to enjoy life. Downloadable materials also make the family gatherings become a ceremonial event.

• ICT brings no limit in communication

Such communication sources as Facebook, Skype, Msn, Twitter, Google talk, Yahoo talk, and others

facilitate the communication between people on the two edges of the world, which prevents isolation as well.

• ICT provides no limit in learning

Technology helps schools provide opportunity to value deep understanding in the disciplines and take

into account students’ needs, interests, and strengths. Students with different learning styles can benefit

from the facilities ICT provides.

• There is no excuse for not using the ICT

ICT helps to improve the quality in education, prepare individuals for the workplace, and develop

inventive thinking and effective communication. It is particularly important to use ICT to enhance the

quality of education by increasing learner motivation, to provide better teacher professional career, to

facilitate a student-centered environment. Distant courses, remote resources, different techniques of

providing information underpin the multiple intelligent learning. Linking the traditional approaches to

the Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences and matching these with complementary digital strategies, tools and

activities is also possible. In Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences (MIs) there are eight intelligences, which is

a disciplinary in itself. Every individual has his own learning style as shown in the diagram below and

this could be developed by the help of ICT.

Gardner (1999) claims that “the computer revolution is already changing how students acquire and use

information; if schools do not rise to this technological opportunity and challenge, they risk becoming

completely anachronistic”. Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence theory can best be fed and put into practice

by the ICT, which might provide opportunity to blend the MIs disciplines given in Figure1.

If designed and implemented properly, ICT-supported education can promote the acquisition of the

knowledge and skills that will empower students for lifelong learning no matter which type of

intelligence he or she has. It is, therefore, required to employ ICT in education.

Cradler (2002) gives seven requirements for effective use of ICT in education: -

Having a vision for the use of technology to support curriculum - - - - - Providing for ongoing technical support for technology use

Figure 1. Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences

(http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Gardners+Multiple+Intelligences+and+ICT)

In general, these requirements fall into five areas of impact:

- providing the infrastructure of hardware and software,

- providing curriculum and technical support for teachers,

- school organization, design, policies and practices, - schooling,

- management support.

The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA) suggest that the effective

use of ICT can lead to benefits in terms of:

• greater motivation

• increased self-esteem and confidence

• enhanced questioning skills

• promoting initiative and independent learning

• improving presentation

• developing problem solving capabilities

• promoting better information handling skills

• increasing ‘time on task’

• improving social and communication skills (BECTA 2002).

Since students enjoy spending time on the computer and sharing their interests in social platforms, the

Internet, it should be considered wise to get them involved into the ICT used educational environment.

The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA 2002) also claims that ICT

can enable children to:

• combine words and images to produce a ‘professional’ looking piece of work

• draft and redraft their work with less effort

• test out ideas and present them in different ways for different audiences

• explore musical sequences and compose their own music

• investigate and make changes in computer models

• store and handle large amounts of information in different ways

• do things quickly and easily which might otherwise be tedious or time consuming

• use simulations to experience things which might otherwise be too difficult or dangerous for them to attempt in real life

• control devices by turning motors, buzzers and lights on or off or by programming them to react to changes in things like light or temperature sensors

• communicate with others over a distance.

On the other hand, the use of ICT might of course cause some handicaps in teaching especially in

overcrowded classes. Schacter (1999, p. 5), for instance, claims that the “level of effectiveness of

educational technology is influenced by the specific student population, the software design, the

educator’s role, and the level of student access to the technology.”

Teachers’ competence for the use of ICT might be another problem. Clearly with the critical role played

by teachers, education systems need to take account of the needs of teachers first (Lankshear & Snyder,

2000). The problems teachers have with the use of computers may be viewed in terms of: access to

adequate infrastructure, and access to support for implementation using that infrastructure. BECTA

(2002) points out that the user problems are mainly due to the lack of experience of teachers and the lack

of consideration of appropriate educational problems to solve. All of these barriers may be addressed by

considering technical and curriculum support for teachers.

In his book entitled “Managing Technological Change: Strategies for college and university leaders”,

Bates (2000) draws attention to the points discussed above and states that:

“Although technology infrastructure plans are essential, they are not sufficient. It is

equally important to develop academic or teaching plans that specify the ways in

which technologies will be incorporated into teaching learning activities” (p. 46).

Bates (2000) also emphasizes that “it is important for universities and colleges to achieve high quality in

any technology-based teaching and learning materials and programs that they develop.” (p. 64). He

further stresses the necessity of computer access in departments: “The real challenge for a department considering requiring students to have computer access is in ensuring that the computer will provide genuine value-added teaching. The worst policy is to make computer access optional.” (p. 90).

The RATIONALE of the STUDY

Since ICT has so many advantages in teaching and learning, it becomes mandatory to use ICT in

education. With this reason in mind, we have questioned whether ICT is used at the university level and

the perception of students regarding the use of ICT. We gave the questionnaire to the engineering students

at the departments of computer engineering, electrical and electronic engineering and marine engineering.

The reason why we chose the engineering departments is due to reports published by UNESCO in 2010

and 2011.The report published by UNESCO in October 2010 was a comprehensive report on engineering

and development, which spells out the great importance of engineering for human society in addressing

and solving global issues. ICTs are a series of instruments that transform the way human collectively

produce and consume information on a global scale. While many teachers and students are already

utilizing some of its capabilities, school and government agencies must design appropriate resource

allocation policies to better capture these revolutionary opportunities.

The report in 2011 sheds new light on the need to:

• develop public and policy awareness and understanding of engineering, affirming the role of engineering as the driver of innovation, social and economic development;

• develop information on engineering, highlighting the urgent need for better statistics and indicators on engineering;

• transform engineering education, curricula and teaching methods to emphasize relevance and a problem-solving approach to engineering;

• more effectively innovate and apply engineering and technology to global issues and challenges such as poverty reduction, sustainable development and climate change – and urgently develop greener engineering and lower carbon technology (UNESCO, 2011).

Today’s “digital native” students are the most effective source of innovation in the formats and content of

ICT-enabled educational services and products. Therefore, engineering schools should be the operating

base for the learning activities that systematically involve engineering students and other appropriate

participants in the creation and refinement of ICT-enabled educational programmes and infrastructures.

The design and implementation process of these “learning activities” should be guided by appropriate

technology-independent quality standards (UNESCO, 2010).

FOCUS and METHODOLOGY

The study focuses on the use of ICT and the perceptions of the students on ICT in engineering

departments. The study is based on a questionnaire given to the students mainly at the engineering

departments at 2 different universities in Turkey. The questionnaire is adopted from the OECD

Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA, 2009). 300 students answered the questionnaire

in total. The students from computer engineering, electric - electronics engineering and marine

engineering departments answered the questions voluntarily. The questions were mainly related to the

frequency of using the ICT in classroom or at home, their perceptions on the use of ICT and their

attitudes towards the use of ICT. The results of only seven questions are discussed in this paper because

of the scope and framework of the research. Due to the scope of the study, the picture painted of the general situation in Turkey is very broad-brush. Finally, again, due to the scope of the study, the findings of the research are mainly trends and should not be considered as representative “hard facts”. FINDINGS

Since the survey was carried out at the engineering departments, particularly Computer Engineering,

Electric - Electronics Engineering and Marine Engineering, our expectancy was to get highly positive

answers to the questions related to the use of ICT both in social and private life. We also expected very

high rank of the use of ICT related to school. The findings, however, were surprisingly different from

what we had been expecting, as seen in the following tables. The tables show the questions asked and the

number of the students marking the choices. The numbers in parentheses show the total percentages of the

students’ perceptions in all three departments.

Table The frequency of ICT use for the activities out of the school Never or hardly ever twice a month a week almost every day 51(17%) 39(13%) 31(10.3%) 155(51.6%) 169(56.3%)

Msn, chat in the facebook, twitter etc

Browse the Internet for fun (such

as watching videos, e.g. you tube)

Download music, movies, games or

software from the Internet

Publish and maintain a personal

website, weblog or blog

Participate in online forums,

virtual communities or spaces(e.g.

second life or my space )

Communicate with family and friends 119(39.6%) 24(8%) 17(5.6%) 18(6%) 62(20.6%) 114(38%) 103(34.3%) 12(4%) 79(26.3%) 170(56.6%) 33(11%) 67(22.3%) 91(30.3%) 154(51.3%) 51(17%) 31(10.3%) 39(13%) 93(31%) 64(21.3%) 66(22%) 52(17.3%) 41(13.6%) 74(24.6%)

Table 1 reflects the use of ICT out of school environment. Students usually use ICT for fun, listening to

music, watching movies, using Msn, skype or Facebook for chat as highlighted in the Table. They make

use of ICT at home for social and entertainment purposes rather than participating forums, conducting

personal websites or doing homework on the computer. This might be due to the lack of responsibility of

surfing the Internet for the purpose of research or assignments or it might be because their class teachers

do not give them responsibility of doing homework related to the ICT.

The departments in which this research was conducted allow students access the Internet for free almost

everywhere in and around their departments. Therefore, we asked the following questions related to the

frequency, time and effective use they devoted on the use of ICT, as shown in table 2,3 and 4.

Table The frequency of ICT use for the activities at school Never or hardly ever twice a month 55(18.3%) 79(26.3%) 100(33.3%) 53(17.6%)

I collect information for

homework and study of the draft

project from the Internet

I download materials or documents 81(27%)

I send my homework or project to

my department’s website

I play simulation games

I do practice with ICT at subject of courses

I study and do my homework as an individual

I join the group works and

communicate with other students

I use ICT for project work and

necessary to department lectures.

I play computer games. I use database

I use Table programs

I use word processor

I use desktop publishing 131(43.6%) 113(37.6%) 98(32.6%) 11(3.6%) 95(31.6%) 105(35%) 50(16.6%) 6(2%) 75(25%) 153(77.6%) 103(34.3%) 51(17%) 37(12.3%) 10(3.3%) 132(44%) 74(24.6%) 39(13%) 2(0.6%) 11(3.6%) 95(31.6%) 79(26.3%) 46(15.3%) 4(1.3%) 148(49.3%) 114(38%) 117(39%) 117(39%) 121(40.3%) 13(4.3%) 5(1.6%) 5(1.6%) 4(1.3%) 4(1.3%) 66(22%)

Table 2 shows that the frequency of using ICT, mainly computer, at the campus is rather low, even for

fun; the highest percentage is 13 % which is for downloading materials or documents to department’s

website and playing computer games. This fact is surprising when it is considered that these students are

candidates of engineers and they are somehow involved in technology. Table 2 puts forward the fact the

percentage of ICT use by students is very low.

A question might arise related to these results, inquiring the ICT literacy level of students. Table 3

clarifies the question of students’ knowledge level of ICT.

Engineering students can manage average tasks on computer namely creating file, preparing PowerPoint

presentations, using windows, copying shapes etc. However, they have difficulty in more subtle tasks

such as creating database, using spread sheet for creating graphic, web authoring tools. Creating and

editing files have the highest frequency of using the computer. Yet, following online courses or getting

involved to the scholastic forums or carrying out research using ICT requires minimum knowledge of

handling computer tasks.

Table The literacy level of using the ICT Cannot 21(7%) 55(18.3%) 86(28.6%) 111(37%)

I can copy digital photography or graphic shapes.

I can create a database 68(22.6%)

I can use spreadsheet for creating a graphic.

I can use a PowerPoint presentation

I can prepare a Multi-media presentation

Windows /other operating systems

File (Creating a new file- editing etc.) Word processor

Web authoring tools 60(20%) 137(45.6%) 84(28%) 59(19.6%) 64(21.6%) 10(3.3%) 20(6.6%) 104(34.6%) 161(53.6%) 29(9.6%) 56(18.6%) 94(31.3%) 104(34.6%) 26(8.6%) 48(16%) 99(33%) 104(34.6%) 6(3%) 41(13.6%) 68(22.6%) 168(56%) 55(18.3%) 61(20.3%) 66(22%) 74(24.6%) 45(15%)

When asked how much time the students spend on computer apart from their academic studies, the

percentage of the answers was evenly distributed, as seen in Table 4.

Table The time spent on ICT apart from academic studies No time 30 minutes 31-60 minutes More than 60 minutes 34(11.3%)

Use of ICT in one day 43(14.3%) 46(15.3%) 41(13.6%)

Students’ answers show an interesting distribution to this question. When asked the time they devote on

the ICT every day, almost equal number of students answered evenly. Yet, students claim that they do not

spend too much time on computer even when it is not related to their academic field.

Table The necessity of the ICT (including Internet access) at the following locations Not needed 14(4.6%) 20(6.6%) 100(33.3%) 176(58.6%)

In classrooms at the school At student’s home At dormitories